#like I have a coherent narrative and all of the plot points written down but I can connect them well at all

[hawkp]

I want to write this Will-centric C-PTSD fic so bad but I am so bad at writing. But I have ALL OF THESE PLOT IDEAS RAHHHHH.

[miraculouslbcnreactions]

Since you've mentioned Scarlet Lady in one of your posts, what's your opinion on it?

I've mentioned before that I'm a big Scarlet Lady fan, which is the only reason that I'm comfortable answering asks like this one. I don't publicly criticize the content of hobby creators. That's wildly inappropriate! Punch up, not down.

The linked post was a general discussion of the adaptation process and how @zoe-oneesama did a fantastic job, so for this one, I'm just going to do some general gushing because I do actually like praising and enjoying things!

Scarlet Lady's chosen format (comic) allows it to have this wonderful conversation with canon where it can rely on the framework of canon to tell it's own story while also using canon for jokes and meta commentary. This means that Scarlet Lady is about as close as fan content can get to a direct reboot because it's able to have moments like this one from the comic's first post:

[Image description: Adrien standing in his room after transforming into Chat Noir for the first time. He is beaming and his eyes are shining with excitement as he exclaims, "This is gonna be awesome!"]

A single picture that communicates everything we need to know about Adrien getting his miraculous. When I've done this same thing in fanfic, I had to write out the full scene because that's how novels work. You have to give the full picture. With a comic, you can just quickly acknowledge this thing that we all already know and then move on to the new stuff. A picture really is worth a thousand words! (Or, in my case, more like two thousand...)

This allows Zoe to keep the same akumas that we get in canon without her story feeling like a boring rehash because she can focus on what's different in her version. A novelization of the same content would have to show both the stuff that stays the same and the stuff that changes for it to be coherent. That's a lot less fun to read and write. It's why I basically never revisit canon akumas in my own stuff. It's just too derivative for the written word.

This is one of the big reasons that I loved Scarlet Lady. Because it was able to have that more directly conversation with canon, it was able to take canon and say, "hey, why don't we embrace the tone that you established in season one and retell the story with that vibe?" That's something that I desperately wanted to see, but that is totally unsuited to my chosen artistic form. It couldn't be a novel. It had to be a comic.

If you want to know what a true formula show version of Miraculous would look like, Scarlet Lady is it. It does everything that Miraculous should have done:

Sticks to a lighthearted tone where nothing is ever super serious

Keeps Gabriel entirely unsympathetic

Has slow character development and background hints at a bigger plot as the only serial elements, allowing the individual episodes to be their own story while never feeling incomplete or rushed

Allows characters other than Marinette to shine while keeping Marinette as the clear main character

Makes Adrien narratively important

MAKES THE LOVE SQUARE CUTE SO I CAN ACTUALLY SHIP IT

Understands that Lila and Chloe can't coexist as antagonists

Reverses the love square, which is the best way to tell their story. Yes, I will die on my "love diamond" hill. It's a good hill. Come join me. I'll bring cookies.

I could keep going, but you hopefully get my point. While Scarlet Lady is certainly not the only way to do a formula version of canon, it's proof that a formula version does work! You don't have to go the serious route for Miraculous to be successful.

I want to take some time to gush about the ending, but I don't want to spoil it, so I'll put that gushing under a "read more" in case anyone hasn't seen it. I'll finish out this less spoilerish section with this:

I feel like some people are surprised when they learn that I love Scarlet Lady because - as some of you have probably picked up - it is quite different from my ideal version of canon. I'm not sure why that would stop me from enjoying a thing, though. It's important to remember that our personal ideals are not the only way to tell a good story. There are lots of ways to take what canon gave us and make something wonderful! It's part of the reason that I enjoy being in a fandom.

If I only wanted to see my ideal take on canon, then I'd stick to writing/imagining my own stories. But I don't want that! I like seeing alternate takes, too. Scarlet Lady is one of my personal favorites. It's completely different from anything that I'd ever think to write and that's why I'm so glad that it exists! I like being entertained just as much as I like creating my own entertainment and I don't want to only read stories that look like something I'd write. That's boring!

Spoilers below:

I've mentioned before that there are many, many ways to properly handle Chloe's character and Zoe did such a good job with her take on that! Chloe isn't absolved of all the things she did wrong, but she's also treated as a young woman with the ability to change.

While the comic bares the name of Chloe's alter ego, she was the never the main character. She never went on a journey. The story kept her to her shallow season-one self: a petty brat who just wanted attention. It did this because that's who Chloe was in canon and who Chloe needed to be for the comic to work.

The first time we see any complexity from Chloe is in the comic's final few episodes, which was absolutely the right call for Zoe to make! In a recent post, I talked about how the end of a formula show is the only time when you can break the formula in catastrophic ways and that's what Zoe did. She kept Chloe static until it was time to end the story and that's when the formula breaks. That's when Chloe gets depth because, once she has depth, the formula doesn't work.

That depth is not used to redeem Chloe, but to show us that there's hope for Chloe. That this petty brat who we've been dealing with has some serious issues and needs help. Help that she's going to get far away from the people that she's hurt because her issues aren't an excuse for what she's done. They don't erase the harm that she caused. At the same time, understanding her issues makes us hope that she can be better now and Scarlet Lady took a moment to give us that hope. To show us the START of Chloe's true story.

That is the kind of ending that I have wanted to see in so many properties!!! It was so wonderful to finally get one that did this right. A story that understood that full redemption to the team and damnation to death/suffering are extremes on a scale of possibilities. You don't have to go to extremes! You can fall in the middle and the middle is a perfect, natural place for Chloe to land in this kind of story. Fully redeeming or even fully damning Chloe simply doesn't work in lighthearted formula content. It's too big a lift as canon has already demonstrated.

I also loved Zoe's take on Emilie. I've mentioned that I don't like evil Emilie in part because it makes her revival feel like the start of a new story. She's back and she'd bad, so we have to take her down now! But I don't want that. I want the story to end when Gabriel is stopped. Zoe does this by giving us an Emilie that is another perfect middle ground. She matches canon's uncomfortable implications without feeling like a true villain who is a threat to society.

[the-other-art-blog]

I cannot deal with one more Benophie fan complaining about the lack of Benedict's artistic side in s3.

Aren't you guys supposed to like this character and understand him?

Everyone complains about the show's lack of accountability, continuity, and consequences. But here it is Benedict's artistic plot going through ups and downs for 3 seasons and fans complain!

That was one of my main wishes for s3: NO ART FOR BENEDICT. It had to be this way.

Benedict thought he had entered the Academy by himself, for his talent. He was so happy to have received external validation and Anthony's interference destroyed that. He destroyed his confidence. Of course, he abandoned art. He felt like a fraud.

If Benedict had resumed painting in s3, this scene would have lost meaning and weight:

What would have been the point of this dramatic moment if he would have been fine next season?

In the book, part of Benedict's arc is growing confident in his art. He has been hiding his talent forever (even more than in the show) because he's afraid and Sophie helps him realize he's an artist. The show found a way to show his art since s1, and still follow the book.

This was not the final season, we still have to see HIS season where all of this needs to be resolved. His season is when he needs to regain confidence and share his art with everyone again, thanks to Sophie.

Yes, it was sad to see Benedict holding a newspaper instead of a sketchbook, BUT IT WAS NECESSARY FOR HIS CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT!!!!!

That brief exchange with Paul said everything the audience needed to know about his art in s3:

Paul asks him if he paints (Paul was being a bit of a jerk here, too judgemental just because Ben is part of the ton, but I get it)

How heartbreaking this was!

He couldn't have said 'yes' even if he talked in past tense because Paul would have asked more. 'Why did you give it up?' And what was he supposed to say: 'My brother paid my way into the Academy'? Of course, he said no. The writers did not forget about s1 and s2, they simply were writing a coherent storyline. Benedict's still not over the betrayal and hurt he felt at the end of s2.

In the meantime, Ben has been filling the hole art left in his heart with work during Anthony's honeymoon. Once that is gone, Ben becomes a jerk (I've talked about this in this post after seeing part 1: x) He's extra grumpy and out-of-character but it makes sense narratively because he's frustrated.

It only gets better when he meets Tilley. She is a temporary solution to his frustration. Once he began his affair with her, he went back to his normal, charming self at balls. This is what he does, what he did for 3 seasons. Sex is like a palliative treatment for whatever turmoil he has inside (see how amazingly appropriate this is for Benophie?)

Moreover, Benedict's sexuality needed to be addressed BEFORE his season. Or would you have preferred to do it while Sophie was there?

Thanks to CVD, who refused to address this matter in s2, Jess had to do it in s3. Honestly, Jess did a lot of fixing this season.

This way Benedict is at peace with that part of himself that had been causing so much anxiety since he met Granville. Not only did Tilley offer a momentary escape valve for his frustration, but she helped him accept a part of his identity AND encouraged him to find love. Honestly, the hate she gets from the Benophie fandom is shameful. She did nothing wrong and only helped and supported Benedict. (Plus Luke Thompson loved those scenes, so 🤷‍♀️)

I shouldn't get so upset about other people's opinions, but honestly. These comments come from people who declare to be stans and queens of the fandom. They also have been in a 2-year tantrum and hate campaign against s3, so not really surprised.

It's so funny because if there's one character that has been written exquisitely, it's Benedict. He's the writers' favorite, 100%. Everything he has done makes total sense and prepares him for Sophie.

[zahri-melitor]

Some more coherent thoughts about Gotham War, now it's settled on me.

(Spoilers below cut, for length and as it's still only Wednesday)

It's not a huge surprise, but Selina's whole 'train henches to steal from the rich non-violently!' ended up being a complete side issue that only existed to get the plot moving. Nobody's conception of this plot, in two years time, will really include this detail, despite the thousands of words spent arguing how ridiculous it was.

Yes it remains a poorly thought out plan on Selina's part (she's never heard of earning money legally) but the narrative also frames it as long term ineffective from the very first issue and knocks it down on multiple occasions.

DC editorial definitely tried to dress this up as a full family event, but realistically it was a Bruce, Selina and Jason event, written by their three current writers, with solid bit parts played by Tim and Dick.

Vandal Savage remains ridiculous and ready to sacrifice anyone and I appreciate that about him. As a villain he was just the right level of stakes for this event.

I enjoyed getting to see Scandal, even if her fans would say she got done dirty here. Scandal usually has enough sense not to believe anything Vandal says, and I admit I was somewhat waiting for some level of twist here as to why Scandal was all for immortality at this point in time, but it never came.

I still agree it felt a lot like three separate plotlines intersecting, but I think they managed to land the event successfully (while leaving some nice loose threads). I actually appreciate they didn't overreach in their goals.

It still finished out with two separate plotlines: Bruce and Selina and Jason; and Dick and Tim and the rest of the family. Structurally this again reminded me as much of Resurrection of Ra's Al Ghul as Batman #138 did; the main plot and then the far more interesting Dick & Tim sideplot which is what I go back to reread. (Chip Zdarsky is clearly also a fan)

Also promisingly for an event yes, it did actually shake up the status quo and push the participants off in new directions.

So Bruce is now doing the Loner Batman thing (in that he's locked out of the fam computers/comm lines), Selina is officially 'dead' (what is with all these fake dead people with titles, Penguin is too right now), and Jason has what's effectively permanent fear toxin response to stressful situations. Also, apparently, we are getting Dick and Barbara back 'running' the Batfam while Bruce is on the outs.

As far as Bruce goes, what has been really notable in this event is how much Chip Zdarsky loves early 2000s Bat comics and their dynamics, and particularly Joker's Last Laugh. There's a lot of structural things about how this event was shaped, what specific characters did, and emotional beats that feel very JLL as someone who's read it at least half a dozen times. It's not the only influence, but it's a pretty prominent one.

Bruce ending the event in a position where he's effectively not working with most of the other Bats actually tracks reasonably well over to Batman & Robin, to my surprise. It makes sense that it's just Bruce and Damian and they're focusing on homelife and domestic relationship details between the two. It gives Bruce an excuse for why he's closely focused on Damian there.

I will admit I have not been reading Catwoman, but from the event it seems they're spinning her off to keep moving her back into a more antihero position. Tini Howard clearly has a direction she wants to take Selina.

I actually think this has pretty interesting storytelling potential for Jason. It means that he has to stay calm, or has to overcome his own fear to achieve things. It gives him a goal? Matthew Rosenberg clearly seems interested in using it for his Jason storytelling and he's got Jason right now, so...

I'm personally delighted by how much Tim Zdarsky wrote into this storyline. He used the space more to show off Dick and Tim's brotherhood and what Tim is good at, rather than push the Tim side of the Zur story we're all expecting to occur (there's that waiting Zur-Robin costume). Means he's planning it for Batman as a title itself rather than getting it tangled up here.

"It was the only way to become the second-best Robin". Yes, this is Tim getting to show off his core competencies - he probably is the only Bat other than Bruce who would have extensively studied all the trophies. Dick would remember a lot of them simply because a lot of the trophies are from old adventures, but pretty much all the others are not particularly retrospective, respect the past sort of members of the group, while Tim has always been surrounded by the shadows of the past. I loved this note.

I haven't talked about Babs yet! She's in green, in glasses, sitting down at her computers with a novelty mug, directing everyone, answering to Oracle. That's her! That's my Oracle!

I do think Bruce expecting Dick to take over running the Batfam right now is a big ask, given he's also running the Titans as the main superhero team on the planet and handling Bludhaven, but Tom Taylor's writing both those books so I don't expect to see the stress catching up with Dick there. Benefits of writer choice right now, I guess. Also personally 'Babs and Dick organise everyone while Bruce has a breakdown elsewhere' is one of my favourite Batfam dynamics so you know, I'm pretty excited if we actually get to see this play out.

New Lazarus Pit in Gotham! This won't be a problem at all.

[crooked-wasteland]

How would you rank every HB episode from worst to best?

This took me some time to think on, but thank you for the ask.

So all the Helluva Boss episodes ranked worst to best (in my opinion):

The Circus

I have to place the season 2 premiere as the worst episode of the entire series, simply because it cemented the direction the story was going to go with all of the worst ideas floating to the top. The relationship mystery between Stolas and Blitz gets watered down to a childhood crush based on nothing. It is love at first sight, but then the writing performs gymnastics in order to justify Stolas’ attraction after the fact. It’s so painful in Seeing Stars and Oops how the writers really want us to believe that Stolas liked him as a person first and that is supposed to be shown in how Stolas thinks Blitz is funny when no one else does, but the series of events in the Circus will forever undermine that narrative. He finds Blitz funny because he is attracted to him. Not the other way around.

Aside from the issues with the overarching story, the entire structure of the episode fails. The idea of Chekhov’s Gun is one I believe holds merit as a fundamental tool. If you are going to introduce something like theft, acknowledge the danger of the event, repeatedly draw attention to the theft, and then just never mention any sort of natural conclusion to that plot point. If anything, Blitz returning to Stolas’ home 25 years later to do the exact same thing, necessitated a coming full circle moment of that particular plot point. The failure to identify even the most basic of narrative principles that was a solid through line of character, story and themes told me everything I needed to know about how the series was going to be handled.

Stolas’ song is a poorly-performed nonsensical word salad that I found lacked any cohesion to the character in the previous episode or the next. It’s an ugly song with maybe 2 decent verses where Stolas acknowledges that this was all playing pretend, but that eventually goes nowhere.

Additionally, Stella was officially ruined as a character, which ultimately ruined Stolas as a character. By not giving Stella depth, Stolas was also stripped of any depth or complexity. His reason for staying is dumbed down to “for the child”, and Stella’s motivation is thrown out the window in favor of “she’s awful and please don’t try to make her understandable, because then what if Stolas is held accountable for anything?” Stella is too important a character in Stolas’ story, to make her one dimensional is to make Stolas less interesting. Everything is interwoven in a story, pulling a thread in one place unravels the garment elsewhere.

In a single episode, it encompasses everything that is wrong with the series, past and future.

0/10

Seeing Stars

To be honest, I feel Seeing Stars is most people’s worst episode due to some sense of denial when the season premiered and expected the show to at least continue with some kind of coherent story/timeline. I don’t think it would be as hated if Medrano had tightened up the narrative and made Seeing Stars connect to Ozzie’s more.

However, I would still put it at number 2, even if it had. Mainly because Seeing Stars is the worst sense of characterization and dynamics I have ever seen. And when you are trying to sell a character-driven story, some kind of consistency is required. This episode cemented Loona as being an abusive, manipulative, and entitled “bitch” of a person. Octavia is written like she is 13, not 17. Blitz and Stolas have the darkest timeline where Stolas continues to sexualize Blitz after being told off in the last episode and seemingly acknowledging that he defined the dynamic without any input from Blitz. Then forces him on stage despite Blitz being on the verge of a panic attack. But most of all, it has Stolas and Blitz both completely forget why they are even in this situation, because they are supposed to be looking for Octavia.

There was no lesson Blitz needed to learn, if anything he needed to be instilled with more self esteem where possible. And Stolas already had this story arc done much better in Loo Loo Land. His character actively regresses to redo the exact plot thread, but worse. Much like The Circus, Seeing Stars set the stage for what we could look forward to in regards to the series from here on out, and the utter disrespect leveled at the original 6 episodes.

That’s not even counting how the episode is the exact same plot and story beats as Loo Loo Land, highlighting the extent of how creatively bankrupt the series is.

.5/10

Exes and Ohs

If it comes to personal most hated episode, it would be Exes and Ohs for me. The only reason it is number 3 and not number 1 is because it is a narrative cul-de-sac where the larger story is not affected by it at all.

However, it is still an objectively awful episode. Starting with the premise. The whole plot is a stolen South Park joke. It’s the Steal underpants episode, stretched out into something longer, and not nearly as funny. If you are wholesale ripping off another show, that’s plagiarism. This episode is creatively bankrupt, shouldn’t exist, has no purpose and serves no benefit. People try to argue that it has value due to Moxxie’s backstory, but what does it even serve? Sure, I know it now, but not a single character does. Millie doesn’t even find out. Even moreso, Millie’s entire connection to Chaz goes nowhere and is for nothing. We never know how, when or why she dated Chaz, it's shown she hates him, but she doesn’t even kill him. The whole episode would have ended exactly the same with Crim killing Chaz once he realized the shark demon was lying about having money.

It’s not good when the major complaints of the episode are actually what is saving it from being the worst episode.

2/10

Musical Special

The retconning of this episode, changing who Fizz was as a child to try and justify his uselessness in Oops retroactively is beyond frustrating. There is so much I could go on about in terms of character, but just focusing on this episode.

Mainly, the mildly perturbing extent Medrano goes to hetero-normalize her queer relationships. Every single relationship in the series is stereotypically designed as “Protector” and “Protected”. Stolas, Fizzarolli, and Moxxie are all characters who require constant support and protection from other factors in the plot.

Stolas needed to be protected from Striker. Moxxie needs to be protected from most things in his plots. Season 1 it was the fish monster, Striker, the agents, and finally Ozzie and Fizz. Season 2 we have him needing to be defended from his father and Chaz.

This episode it's all about Fizzarolli and him needing to be defended from his crippling low self-esteem that is only relevant to have him needing to be saved from something. The flashback serves to further retcon Fizz’s personality because a strong and confident performer doesn’t need to be saved from anyone, and in order to have the codependent romance where Fizz needs Ozzie, we need to fundamentally weaken him as a person. It’s a special episode, so the argument that it doesn’t need to exist is rather moot. Regardless, the characters and story are worse off for its addition to the narrative.

2/10

Queen Bee

Another special episode, so the argument of narrative value is once again disregarded. I dislike this episode for how one dimensional every female character is in this story. It highlights all the ongoing issues with misogynistic writing. Loona’s character is a wildly swinging pendulum from being antagonistic towards Blitz to being endeared with little motivation and ultimately being reduced to the caretaker of men. When she and Bee get into an argument, she only deescalates when she sees Tex be uncomfortable. The initial hostility itself is founded on nothing, Loona is immediately resentful of Bee because she’s attractive and people like her, specifically Tex. And her being sweet towards Blitz is entirely based on the fact that her relationship to him makes her look good due to his accomplishment of beating Beelzebub in a drink-off. It doesn’t read sincere, but rather she would look bad if she didn’t take care of him after identifying him as her “dad” when it suited her.

This entire episode works to assassinate Loona’s character and any hope of her being likable and growing. Everything about her motivation is purely selfish and consistently reinforced in big ways, so moving forward it will be very hard to realistically prove she does anything for not her own benefit.

The song was nice for about one minute, then it became unbearably repetitive.

1.5/10

Western Energy

This episode was altered and rewritten, which doesn’t inherently make it bad. It’s just that it was changed due to fans pointing out the glaring plot hole that is why Stella would want to kill Stolas when a divorce would benefit her more. Instead of critically assessing that question and focusing more on world building to create a logical justification for Stella’s actions, the writers shrug their shoulders and just can’t think of anything. It’s a special form of fridge horror as a writer to realize the major plot that was intended to push Blitz and Stolas closer together was so underdeveloped that when at all questioned resulted in the entire plot being unwritten. It’s transparently bad writing, but worse yet is that it is lazy.

This episode is what I use to show an example of how fans inject headcannon and plot into the series that the creators have no interest in spending the energy on. This isn’t James Cameron’s Avatar where there is a massively rich world around a lackluster story that has been crafted with such detail that it feels alive. Helluva Boss, and in extension Hazbin Hotel, have no world building and resort to the most superficial answers to any narrative roadblock at the expense of the characters and understanding their motivations. It shows resentment for not just the audience, but writing as an artform.

3/10

Ozzie's (with season 2 context)

I had to put Ozzie’s on the list twice due to this episode in specific having vastly different reads and reception before and after season 2 premiered. After The Circus, the episode loses all continuity with the original season. Stolas is pining and lovesick over Blitz, he doesn’t actually care about his wife and daughter leaving him. He just wishes more than anything to have his rugged peasant return his affections.

It is a plummet of quality and character in this episode that only comes to fruition with the understanding that Stolas has had an unreciprocated crush for two and a half decades.

With the context of season 2, Stolas doesn’t actually care about his daughter and how his affair, the marriage falling apart, their status, etc. affected her and his family. He only cares about the little boy he got a crush on, who his father rented out like a Lexus and then 25 years later Stolas demanded sex from. Stolas has a complete personality change and isn’t at all who he was the entire series to this point. Everything you thought mattered to him doesn’t, the ways we have come to expect this character to react to things is suddenly entirely different. His expectations are unexplainable and so far out to left field than what we previously established. This is one of the worst written episodes based on the major retconning of a keystone character and no effort being made to connect these changes in the narrative.

This was the warning shot we didn’t know we were given.

1/10

Spring Broken

Spring Broken to Unhappy Campers are the range of utterly ambivalence I have.

The song is poorly incorporated into the episode. Verosika isn’t ever fleshed out. Tex and Loona start off cute, and you can see a starting point of a dynamic between Loona and Blitz and you want her to treat him better while also recognizing that he infantalizes her constantly and doesn’t ever treat her like the adult she is. Could have been really good writing if it went anywhere. This episode establishes Loona abuses Blitz and does so intentionally because it gets her her way. It isn’t malicious, but immature and incredibly cruel, and there is a desire to see her become a better person and grow from this point.

Too bad.

4/10

C.H.E.R.U.B

I know this episode gets a ton of criticism for being a joke/filler episode that goes too long. And that is absolutely correct. However it is still better in that being filler, it is not seeking to be anything more than it is. It is just some dumb fun with a few jokes that come anywhere close to landing. But it doesn’t harm the characters or their stories, unlike the rest of the list up to this point

3/10

Oops

This episode is a hard one to place because I consider the first 7 of this list to be bad episodes. Then 8-12 are those that aren’t good with varying scales of enjoyment on my part. However I think Oops is neither good nor enjoyable. But it has some good story ideas that deserve some credit, regardless of how the writing and pacing consistently tries to undermine them.

The scene of Blitz and Fizzarolli in the alleyway is contrived and feels confused, but it does manage to land some points such as Fizz’s insecurity of being owned by his partner (too bad that goes nowhere and is immediately ignored in favor of Fizz NEEDS Ozzie, so essentially ownership is good actually) and Fizz hanging Blitz’s insecurity and guilt over his head.

The forced engagement, rapid fire pacing, and immediate resolution thoroughly dismantles any good points the episode started to set up. I have to admit the animation is pretty solid, people worked very hard on this for less pay than this quality deserves. But this episode struggles to find a place it belongs on my list because. It almost sees the light only to bury its head in the sand writing-wise.

2/10

Unhappy Campers

Unhappy Campers sits in the same pool with Oops and how it is objectively a terrible episode, but the portions involving Blitz and Barbie are genuinely interesting and I think relatively well done when compared to the rest of the season. Millie has some fun moments herself, though the whole portion of the episode surrounding her and Moxxie could have been cut and it would only serve to elevate the material overall. So even if she is the best part of the worst portion of the story, it still isn’t something I deem worth salvaging.

It would have been an excellent 5 minute episode.

2/10

Murder Family

It’s the first episode. It did well reintroducing the characters from the pilot. It had enough intrigue to see where it would go and how it would expand the world and characters. It. Was genuinely fun and impressive for a YouTube animation, with horror notes and black comedy. There was a sense of character that we could maybe get to know over time and see them struggle and change. It started off very superficial, which was fine.

The blank canvas of what could have been.

5/10

Ozzie's (Before season 2)

Having to remember Ozzie’s premiere after an entire season of thinking we were getting to know the characters, their dynamics, personality, wants, etc. So the personality change in Stolas is given more leeway as LooLooLand set up that he really wished he could find love and his wife and daughter leaving has changed his routine to the point he is in a depression. It even seems Stella took the staff with her in the separation and he’s genuinely all alone.

So him sitting in front of a television asking why nobody will love him makes sense and doesn’t feel out of character when given the room to rationalize and try to piece together the character from past instances. Additionally, him becoming overjoyed at Blitz calling him out is just as easy to rationalize away. I recall watching the episode and interpreting that Stolas was needy, desperate and earnest, not for Blitz, but just in general. And Blitz making himself available to Stolas is why Stolas tries so hard to make this pretend date legitimate. It also explains Blitz’s own utter disinterest in the scenario.

Ironically, looking back, Blitz feels like an Audience insert with how utterly confused and dismissive he is of Stolas’ targeted affection. He sees their relationship like the audience does: one of convenience and mutual benefit. Blitz calling Stolas out is him cashin in on this messed up coercive sex deal they have. Him calling Stolas out and using him for his own gains is only seen as fair in his eyes. And Stolas’ attempts to legitimize the date is a continuation of his own hedonistic selfishness. So when Stolas tries to leave Blitz or otherwise removes himself by covering his face, Blitz’s anger and resentment is valid. Because there’s a lot of confusion taking place at the moment, but Stolas is responsible for all of it and instead runs away.

The exact same escapist behavior that ended up with him in bed with Blitz in the first place.

This is all really compelling drama and without the codependent neediness of the second season, it ties together in what feels like a real season finale for the characters. Everything up to now was a prologue, an introduction of the world, characters and conflicts. Ozzie actually took the characters and faced them off against each other directly. Showing all of their worst traits and building more intrigue to Blitz’s past and his relationships. This was an episode of great potential when it was first released.

7/10

Loo Loo Land

I’ll be honest, the more I think on this episode the more I believe its placement is more out of pettiness than actual quality. While a song that made me invested at the time, You Will Be Okay is a poorly written musical song. Specifically in how it fails to actually build on the themes we were having presented. Because if you really listen to it, the song foreshadows how little Stolas actually cares about Octavia.

The only part of the song that builds character is the one when he speaks of how his marriage is cold and loveless and how “all [his] stories have been told, except for one.” Which one would think that untold story has something to do with Octavia. He’s singing the song for her, to her. He’s presumably alluding to the fact that she’s his only joy in life.

But the very next line is talking about Armageddon. Like the end of everything, the death of the universe, some heavenly judgement. That’s why everyone and their off brand YouTube clone was talking about Stolas dying at some point in the series. Because the song fails to adequately communicate the character and his feelings and how that wraps into the plot. It’s a pretty song to the ears, but fails as a musical.

Additionally, I feel I may still have such a soft spot for this episode in how it often contradicts the current direction the story has attempted to go. Details, dialogue, timeline discrepancies, all of that has continued to hinder the second season in trying to retcon the entire story to this lesser version of itself and Loo Loo land as an episode is just so tightly written that it has become a thorn.

All the portions with Blitz and RoboFizz are great. Great character, great foreshadowing (to nothing unfortunately), great pacing. Those scenes have some legitimately funny jokes. Stolas stole the show it seems, much to the series detriment, but the real stellar parts of the episode were for once the actual main character.

6/10

Truth Seekers

This episode would have been my favorite due to Blitz’s bad trip and the animation involved throughout. However, the fact that the show has entirely dropped the relevant and interesting portions of the episode, overused and abused Stolas’ demon design since this episode, and the animators have since been confirmed to not be paid fairly for the work they do, this gets to be number 2.

Like Loo Loo Land, Truth Seekers is a primary source of contradiction in the new direction the story has gone and a constant reminder of how little work has been put into the narrative. It’s one of the strongest episodes of the series as a whole, but it has been almost entirely retconned.

I have seen some mention of the agents returning to the story and if that does come to pass, this will be hilarious in trying to reconcile what parts of Truth Seekers is canon and what isn’t any longer. And the realization that all the best parts are the ones ending up on the cutting room floor.

7/10

Harvest Moon

Striker was an intimidating figure. Genuinely. There was a real sense of weight to this episode in the animation and visual storytelling. It’s a solid episode for what it is and far and above better than even Truth Seekers because it required Medrano and her staff to actually address the episode and make obvious efforts to retcon it. That is how solid an episode this is.

Stolas is not too creepy and dominating, but nor is he seen as the delicate princess who is always crying over some guy who doesn’t return his feelings. He is fun, and it starts the nudge towards maybe something a bit more amicable on Blitz’s end.

Millie absolutely deserved more time for her character seeing as they were staying with her family and she having an episode of standing by her husband and defending her choices in who she loves would have been far more engaging than Murder Family pt. 2, Moxxie lacks confidence and self esteem forever and always.

The song was so inconsequential. It was a funny segue with Striker basically upstaging Moxxie at every turn, but that doesn’t actually go anywhere when in regards to the plot overall.

And Stella putting a hit on her husband, to his face, was hilarious and would have been so interesting to have seen it played more than a joke. Like Stolas knows she wants to kill him, and he is just vaguely fine with that. Maybe thinking his letting her try to kill him would have her stay and not file for divorce. Have it been this macabre comedic sitcom where she’s always trying to kill him and hates his guts for being a subpar husband, but he takes it as some kind of tit-for-tat and plays along with it. She gets to send assassins after him, he gets to have sex with his rugged assassin imp. It’s a ridiculous level of absurdity that still allows for all the characters to be dimensional.

That got a little away from me there. Basically, this episode was the strongest overall. Animation wise, writing wise, story potential wise. This episode is the most solid Helluva Boss episode.

7.8/10

[carigm]

Today Millie had a fan panel in which she answered that her ideal ending would be Mike and El getting married and Will being happy and confessing to Mike (lol) and ofc the Stranger Things fandom kicked up the old Byler vs Mlvn war once again, regardless of the fact she doesn’t write the show. But I want to break down some points here about things I’ve been noticing today, but also for a while and that I think need to be discussed. Keep reading if you want.

I’ve seen a lot of hostility towards Byler and Bylers on Twitter lately, saying we’re delusional and don’t know what we’re talking about. This always seems to be the go to argument even tho it’s all in the narrative. Today it got really bad after Millie’s comments and even people that were merely disagreeing with her opinions got called everything from delusional to misogynistic.

IF the Duffers suddenly decided to ignore everything they’ve carefully crafted and put into their narrative that doesn’t make anyone delusional, it just makes them terrible writers. Who would be doing a great disservice to all three characters involved in the love triangle.

There’s been an insurgence (on Twitter) of so called “Will stans” who seem to be completely fine with the idea of mlvn being endgame because “Will can just get another boyfriend” Not only is this insulting to what the writers have already established for Will’s character but it’s also a defense and endorsement of the worst kind of lazy/bad writing that could graze our screens.

The Duffers CHOSE to tie Will’s character arc to Mike’s and El’s.

How do you expect them to undo that and create a well fleshed out character that’s deserving of Will, in 8 episodes that we know are not just gonna be dedicated to Will’s supposed love interest, because there’s a shit ton of stuff to resolve?

If this was the route the Duffers were going for, they could’ve clearly given Will a love interest last season (like with Robin) or two seasons ago (like with Dustin) And yet somehow, people think it would be totally okay for Will to get the most meaningless romance of all time as the writers ignore the same story they’ve created.

Another point I’ve been seeing a lot from these people is “Mike won’t come out. Let it go. He’s just a very unlikable character” What does that say about the quality of the writing and content you’re willing to consume then? You’re okay with characters being poorly written? And please someone explain to me how Mike’s actions, especially in S4, make any sense unless he likes Will.

The more people try to simplify this story the more plot holes and inconsistencies it creates.

The funny thing is that a lot of these “Will stans” used to be Bylers themselves but are so deathly afraid it won’t be endgame that they’ve started to use the same rhetoric mlvns use every day to justify what would be atrocious writing.

And this next thing might be controversial but I think it needs to be said.

So many people on Twitter have hit those who disagree with Millie’s opinion today with “y’all are misinterpreting Millie’s words” and let me tell you, no one has. She’s been saying the same stuff for forever and quite frankly she’s never had a coherent thought about Will. Which is fine, at the end of the day that’s not the character she plays. However, I haven’t forgotten how last year (at another panel) she was asked about Byler and said it was just a reflection of Finn and Noah’s friendship and that was what people were seeing…

Whatever the fuck that means, I guess.

Again, I’m not taking her answer today too seriously cause truth be told she’s been saying some version of this since she was around twelve, and has even at times said she was joking about it. If a wedding were actually happening she wouldn’t be able to say it cause I’d literally be a spoiler, even if she doesn’t have the scripts yet or doesn’t know I’m sure there’s things that would be off limits for any actor to say at this point.

But this defense squad that formed today begging for us to not misconstrue her words because “she really cares about Will’s character” is laughable.

Her answers regarding the topic of the love triangle have been anything but nuanced. If she doesn’t want to get into it or address it, that’s fine. It’s her choice.

But of course, mlvn stans are gonna take her answers seriously, as well as those who are now “Will stans” who basically ship mlvn too.

And to me there’s a fundamental flaw regarding the ship wars in this fandom, which these people don’t seem to grasp. At this point, it isn’t so much about “which ship is better” but “which outcome isn’t violently homophobic”

That’s it.

I don’t care how much you ship mlvn, this is the undisputed truth here.

But when your lead actors act like it’s not a big deal, it’s no surprise the fandom doesn’t give a shit.

I can only hope the Duffers were smart enough to see reason and were able to write the only outcome that won’t set television back around 10 years or so.

And hopefully one day, when S5 is out, we can get a more in depth and honest conversation with the actors about all of this.

As for me, I’m gonna lay low and not give much of a fuck until we start getting those Reddit leaks, which were very much accurate for last season. I’ll take a peak at those, and depending on what they look like, I’ll stay around or dip completely.

If you read all of this, thank you.

[thefinalcinderella]

Tsurune Book 3 Afterword

Full list of translations here

Time for my unsolicited book review!

Tsurune Book 3 is one of the books of all time.

I'm not trying to be funny, that is my true opinion about this book.

I've said before that it feels like the author was forced to write this book in a hurry, and after finishing it, I can only say that those feelings have only grown stronger. I think the author was going for an abstract and spiritual feeling but it didn't really work out. It only made the story hard to follow, and the tendency for the novel to jump from topic to topic seemingly at random didn't help. It's probably super obvious in the author's head, but that doesn't matter if the reader can't follow their thinking. I really do question what the editors are doing because I'm not sure if they're giving the author proper feedback.

The novel also suffers from trying to do a lot but not doing any of it satisfactorily. It introduced a lot of new characters and plot points but never really did anything with them?? The new first-years faded out of the story after the beginning and idek what's going on with Kuon. As for the new school Haneina...the author just gave them one """quirky""" trait each and called it a day. It kinda happened with Tsujimine too but it was more subtle with them, and I think the central relationship of Nikaidou and Fuwa was compelling and well-written. Asahina and Eddie, on the other hand, are just really weird?? I honestly don't understand what their narrative role is supposed to be??

This might be a controversial opinion but I feel like the anime tells a more coherent, polished version of the story. I was rewatching it the other day and I was kind of blown away by how the visual quality improved between the seasons. S1 was definitely not bad looking but S2 is just *chef's kiss*. Idk if there's going be an S3 but it will be interesting to see how (or if) they adapt book 3

Anyways i don't want to say that book 3 is kinda pointless since it did give us some reveals (perhaps unnecessarily) but on the other hand...i feel like book 2 had a nice ending for the series as a whole as well? idk. if there is going to be a book 4, i hope it will be all about Kazemai hunting down Masa-san's bio dad

Thanks for following along with me! I know I've been really slow with this so im glad people are still interested haha

Previous |

This happened when I was reading a certain foreign novel’s translated version. As I was reading through the point of view of a character whose first-person pronoun was “私” (watashi), I came across a surprising description. To my surprise, the character I thought was a woman suddenly started to shave their beard. Later, I learned that there was an unspoken rule that men used “watashi” written in kanji, and women used “watashi” written in katakana.

Minato’s personal pronoun is “ore” in hiragana. It encompasses the meaning of “undifferentiated,” someone of unknown gender who is neither male or female, although his physical body is that of a boy. Nanao’s pronoun is “ore” written in katakana, a person of unknown nationality who can’t be classified as either Japanese or foreign, a person who wavers between the two, a hybrid existence that crosses that line. Takigawa Masaki is also someone who hovers between “human” and “not human,” so his name is written as “Masa-san” (マサさん) in the text. Shuu is also a character who is in between.

I’m attracted to such “fluctuating” and “swaying” things. Things that can’t fixed or distinguished in form or state, as changeable as “water.” Kaleidoscopic freedom and loneliness are two sides of the same coin. People who fluctuate cannot stay in one place, and instability follows. Because they can’t be classified, they do not belong anywhere, nor can they be emphasized with. I wanted to somehow hold back those who can’t stop walking. I wrote this story because I wanted them by my side.

Changing the topic, I was on my way home from a domestic trip. After spending a relaxing time listening to the chirping of birds on an isolated island, I heard a large explosion sound when I got off at a certain station in Tokyo. The warning signal of a train entering the station continued to sound, and announcements reverberated from all over. I forgot to bring my earphones, so I was unable to plug my ears and ran all the way to the edge of the platform. Glowing neon lights reflected diffusely, and the words on billboards and other signs crowded in my field of vision like a herd of horses. I almost thought that I had time travelled back to wartime. We had become so accustomed to the flood of sound, light, and text that we don’t realize we’re on the verge of drowning.

Tsurune is the story of masters and disciples and bow friends with the theme of rebirth, and it began as the story of seven archers. The theme of Volume 3 is “Meigen, that is the sound of the dawn,” and I wrote about shari kenshou (seeing true nature through the shot).

I would like to express my sincere gratitude to everyone involved in the making of this book: Koyama Kyugu-sama, who I’ve interviewed, T-sama of the KA Esuma Bunko Editorial Department, Kyoto Animation-sama who was in charge of illustrations, the proofreaders, the novel’s official website, the printing company, and the distributors. The letters I’ve received are my treasures, and I have displayed them in my tokonoma alcove. I would like to thank my beloved kyudo teachers and bow friends, my precious friends, and my supportive family.

Last but not least, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to all the readers who have read this far.

I hope for the day when the beautiful tsurune of the archers will resound.

Ayano Kotoko

Spring 2022

Previous |

[katrinafaire]

In 30+ years of writing, you do improve; here's some things I've learned.

When I first started actively writing stories -- we're talking single digits here, under the age of ten, as some of you may relate -- my initial goal was spelling things right and having a (mostly) cohesive, if simple, storyline.

Then, in some order I'm not sure of, were things like description, consistent character voices, character development, character driven plots, subplots, worldbuilding -- the list goes on, I'm sure we've all worked on some if not all of these things. (The beauty of writeblr, we're all here together despite different levels of experience.)

I feel like I've always written, but I didn't really sit down to write novella and eventually novel sized works until my late teens-early twenties. I had a lot going for me, because I'd been writing consistently over the years prior. But I had some... quirks. Here's a non-exhaustive list you may find of use:

I struggled with maintaining a clear POV -- who's perspective we were in, how to coherently jump between characters, how to balance that to the best benefit of the narrative... yeah, that was an issue. And I still have a bit of trouble with that now and then, though I'm worlds better.

Also, I hugely overused epithets, those descriptive terms instead of pronouns or names. (The tall man, the blonde woman, the sullen teenager -- you get the idea.) You see, I didn't understand how they worked. I used them mostly because I had a lot of big casts and was not fond of he said-he said-he said with three different he's and I felt like I was over using names.

As I began to hone my craft, it became clearer that these had their place -- but only where they were relevant, not as a replacement. For example, if the POV character doesn't know the name of another character, they will use epithets because that's all they have. Or you can use it to emphasize something:

"There's no way we can deliver the message in time!" Aaron said. The fastest man in the world just smiled; his time had come. "Watch me."

Presumably you already know the speedster's name, but even if you don't, the epithet delivers important information to the narrative; that is the perfect (though not only) time to use one.

There was a huge movement when I was just starting more serious writing and you have likely still seen these posts circulating: said is dead. And I took it as gospel. Now, first let me say I am still a huge fan of dialogue tags. Big fan of things like "whispered" and "sneered" -- things you can't easily convey simply with punctuation.

However.

Using them every line, or every other line, or every third line -- in short, frequently -- isn't good. And it's not because these things are inherently bad. The reason, as far as I'm concerned, is twofold. One, when you deviate from "said" then your audience immediately is drawn to this new dialogue tag, taking it as Important Information. Which is good! We want that when we put those in. But if you have too many in too short of time the brain just quits processing them as important, or worse, it keeps taking them out of the story.

Point two is directly related in that in that overuse of dialogue tags not only clogs up your dialogue, it also makes the dialogue tags less valuable. Imagine this if you will, that every dialogue tag is a colored font and "said" is just black. If you constantly use dialogue tags, do any of them stand out? Even if someone screamed in bright red, does it matter if you just had something in bright orange a line ago? Not really.

But if all you have is black on black on black and suddenly there's a bright red streak on the paper, it jars you! It makes you pay attention! And that's what you really want when you use dialogue tags, isn't it? So that's why I've tried to cut down on mine, and have beta readers specifically work with me on it.

There's also several punctuation and formatting things I've struggled with. Overusing italics, misplacing en dashes — and em dashes (look I even copy pasted the right ones instead of typing two en dashes --) — as well as a severe abuse of... ellipsis. I'm working on them to this day. I'm a dramatic wordsmith. Sometimes it helps for me to write it however I want the first time and then make a new draft, stripping the formatting and seeing with fresh eyes where it's needed.

There's other things, too (I have never done enough description, I'm working on it now) but this post is getting long and I've shared some main points that I feel others can benefit from my mistakes. Feel free to reblog with your own mistakes you've learned from or are working on!

[kuiperblog]

What makes movie action “good?”

There’s a John Wick movie in theaters. There seems to be pretty uniform agreement that John Wick movies have great action, and simultaneously, there seems to be a lot of general “Marvel fatigue,” some of which is specifically about the MCU, but also some of which is about “action blockbusters” that seem to put a lot of focus on action and spectacle that a lot of people seem to be growing increasingly disenchanted with. (See, for example:  Tomorrow War (2021) starring Chris Pratt, Extraction (2020) starring Chris Hemsworth, and to round out the Chris roster we also have Wonder Woman 1984 (2020) with Chris Pine.)

Most of the discussion tends to focus on effects, and how making everything in a computer feels soulless while practical effects like the ones in John Wick and Everything Everywhere All At Once are superior, and there’s a certain degree to which blockbuster CG does look worse due to everything being computer generated. But I think a much bigger and more deep-seated problem is that blockbuster action is poorly structured.

There are a lot of great practical scenes in John Wick with choreography that is great not just in execution, but in concept: if you recreated them with computer animation, or hand-drawn animation, many of them would be just as fun. You could look at a storyboard with a director’s poorly-drawn pencil sketches and you’d still be able to follow the logic and understand what the scene’s impact is supposed to be. You can tell this, because people can describe these scenes, and regularly do exactly that, because they’re memorable. It’s what the legend of John Wick is all about. (And it’s not just the “top 10 most creative John Wick kills” listicles that remind us of that fact.)

The thing is, John Wick doesn’t rely on the unique outlandish props for memorable kills. Most of John Wick’s kills boil down to “point gun, pull trigger.” And yet despite that most of his kills are with bullets, so many of them feel unique. Each scene feels like it has a tempo to it, a sense of flow, a chain of cause and effect. “That guy is hiding behind a pillar, but his toe is sticking out. So I’ll shoot him in the toe, causing him to bend over in pain, exposing the rest of his body so I can shoot center of mass.” There’s always the moment when John Wick runs empty and has to reload before delivering the killshot.

There’s a storytelling principle that’s often applied to plot structure. This was famously described by Trey Parker to a bunch of NYU students on MTVU's "Stand In." Trey Parker describes the writers room as containing a massive white board, split into 3 acts, where they write down ideas scenes and rearrange them. Each scene has to be entertaining by itself, but they also need to be connected by a coherent narrative through-line.

"You don't want just one scene where, 'well, what was the point of that?' Take the beats of your outline, and if the words 'and then' belong between those beats, you've got something pretty boring. What should happen between every beat that you've written down is either the word 'therefore,' or 'but.'”

A happens, therefore B happens. Or, B doesn't happen, but C happens, therefore D happens. Repeat.  You can use this to structure the plot for a 25-minute TV episode, or a 120-minute movie, or a 2-minute action scene. Follow it, beat by beat, and see if one leads to the next:

One of the evil henchmen comes swinging at our hero with a wooden chair raised over his head, but the hero dodges and the wooden chair smashes against the floor, shattering. Therefore, the ground is now covered with the broken remains of a wooden chair, so the mook picks up one of the long pieces of wood that served as a chair leg and begins swinging at the hero again. But the hero successfully dodges and the wooden club breaks and splinters in a way that causes it to become, therefore the mook starts trying to use the splintered end to stab the hero...

I’m not saying this is an amazing action scene, but it’s a competent one: each beat flows into the next. The chair becomes a chair leg, then the chair leg becomes a shiv. Each time the henchman comes rushing at the hero, he’s doing it with a different weapon. The scene has a logic to it: if you rearranged the shots, the scene wouldn’t make sense. You can’t start with a splintered piece of wood and then end on an intact chair.

So many mediocre action movies fail to deliver it. The bad guy punches the hero. And then he punches the hero again. And then he tries to kick the hero. And then he punches in a different, cooler way. There’s no real sense in which each beat is a consequence of what followed it: if you cut the scene up and rearranged the shots, a lot of people might not even notice. (And in fact that sort of thing happens all the time in the editing bay.)

Tony Zhou self-deprecatingly describes this problem when critiquing one of his own videos, saying “This is a list you could put in any order. That’s why it’s so boring.”

For examples of action cinema where every beat feels like a consequence of what preceded it, watch any classic Jackie Chan movie (the ones that came out of Hong Kong, not Hollywood). Tony Zhou describes it like this:

“So how does Jackie create action that is also funny? First off, he gives himself a disadvantage. No matter what film, Jackie always starts beneath his opponents. He has no shoes. He’s handcuffed. He has a bomb in his mouth.“

“From this point, he has to fight his way back to the top. Each action creates a logical reaction. And by following the logic, we get a joke.” (Jackie is facing an assailant with a gun; Jackie has a gun, but it’s empty. Therefore, Jackie fakes surrender, handing his empty gun to the assailant. Therefore, the assailant is now holding an unloaded gun in his left hand. The assailant now thinks he has control of the situation, but reaching for the unloaded gun distracted him the fact that Jackie was entering a fighting stance and getting ready to kick: therefore, when Jackie kicks, he succeeds in knocking the loaded gun out of the assailant’s right hand. Therefore, the assailant tries to fire at Jackie using the gun in his left hand -- which is empty, and he realizes it in a moment of surprise which Jackie seizes on by punching the assailant in the face.)

This is the joy of watching Jackie Chan films: much like the example of a chair (which morphs into a chair leg, which morphs into a shiv), a prop in a Jackie Chan movie is rarely just one thing. A ladder isn’t just a ladder; it’s a prop. And it’s several different kinds of props. Fighting with a ladder like this:

...is subtly different than fighting with a ladder after this happens: 

And if you flip it over a guy’s head, it suddenly becomes a cage: 

...trapping a guy just long enough for him to look at you in surprise right before your fist intersects with his face.

It’s great for action comedy, but it’s also great for straight action: sometimes, the “punchline” is someone getting defeated in a surprising way. John Wick is one of the few big franchises of recent years to reliably do this sort of thing well.

Often, John Wick accomplishes this by being clever.  But I think a big part of it comes down to the fact that John Wick is just mortal enough for the number of bad guy’s he’s facing to matter. Each scene needs a sense of “progress,” where the stakes are constantly changing, and sometimes the change in stakes is as simple as, “There are five bad guys, oh no!” Bang bang, pivot, bang bang. “Okay, now there are only three bad guys.” (It’s harder to do this when you’ve been injected with super soldier serum and wear a suit made of high-tech blast resistant stretch fabric: Captain America subduing five bad guys doesn’t feel meaningfully different from him subduing three bad guys, even if the way he punches them is really cool.)

Stakes matter! If threat level scales linearly with the number of bad guys on screen, then each scene will have a natural eb and flow to it as bad guys get gradually picked off (or as more of them stream into the room, or pick themselves up off the floor and reach for the gun they just dropped).

One of the MCU scenes that actually did this better than most is the famous Captain America elevator scene: first, Crossbones and two guys get onto the elevator with cap. A bit surprising. Why is that guy resting his hand on his hip so close to his gun? Several floors later, the elevator opens, and four more guys get on. They’re wearing suits, like you’d expect from people who just showed up for a day at the office. This is headquarters, there’s nothing to be worried about. So why is that guy sweating? Then, the  door opens again, and three more guys get on -- and these guys are wearing tac gear. But hey, it’s Jack -- I know Jack, he was in the first ensemble movie, he can’t be one of the bad guys...so why is he standing directly between me and the door?

It’s a great example of slowly amping up the tension by gradually adjusting the threat level up. The scene even amps up the tension by having the magnetic handcuff, which leaves Cap in various stages of incapacitation throughout the fight. And he has to fight his way up from the bottom. But we very quickly go from this iconic shot:

...then after literally three seconds of Cap delivering a rapid series of strikes to incapacitate most of the mooks, he’s back to fighting two or three of them at a time.

Despite there being ten bad guys in the elevator, it’s kind of hard to get a clear fix on how many of them attacking Cap at any given moment, all of the others existing in various states of injury and recovery after they get the wind knocked out of them. In fact, the only shot that allows us to get a full body count is after the fight is over:

But it’s still a fun scene, one of my favorites, succeeding at being fun and memorable.

The bigger issue is the need to be “epic”: threat level can’t scale linearly with the number of bad guys on screen when you want a scene where there are literally hundreds of enemies to fight off.

There’s a certain point at which the marginal effect of another bad guy on screen is effectively zero. Obviously, this is the case when you have hundreds or dozens of enemies on screen, but there’s a real sense in which “group of seven bad guys” doesn’t feel different from “group of six bad guys.” Our brains just categorize both as “a pretty big cluster.” Research tends to come to slightly different results on this, but it seems like humans count “one, two, three, four, many.” Once you have five bad guys on screen, adding a sixth bad guy doesn’t do anything to change the stakes.  (That’s the problem with having a hero who’s so strong that you need to throw 10 bad guys at him to pose any threat.)

If you cap the total number of on-screen bad guys at five, then each enemy the hero defeats meaningfully changes the stakes, and John Wick does this a lot. In many cases, the flow just comes from watching the number of bad guys on screen decrease linearly as the hero picks them off, one by one. It gives the scene a natural scenes of progress, and it can sometimes be played for comedy, like Neal Stephenson does in Snow Crash in a scene described by a sniper’s dialog:

"It's, like, one of them drug dealer boats," Vic says, looking through his magic sight.  "Five guys on it.  Headed our way."  He fires another round.  "Correction.  Four guys on it."  Boom.  "Correction, they're not headed our way anymore."  Boom.  A fireball erupts from the ocean two hundred feet away.  "Correction.  No boat."

That’s a (very short) scene with flow. You can’t rearrange the beats; every beat leads to the next. Follow the logic, and arrive at the punchline.

[literary-illuminati]

2024 Book Review #10 – The Last Graduate by Naomi Novik

I read A Deadly Education last year and quite enjoyed it (and Novik’s unrelated Spinning Silver is just one of my favourite low fantasy books full stop so she has quite a bit of my trust), so I finally got around to putting in a hold request for the sequel. Broadening your horizons and reading outside your comfort zone means swimming through 400 pages of YA a couple times a year, right? Anyway, despite only barely remembering who anyone but El and Orion were when I went into this, was a fun read!

The book picks up more or less directly where A Deadly Education stops – with the horrible murderous monster-infested extradimensional wizard high school’s cleansing machinery repaired for the first time in generations, and the place therefor incredibly less monster-infested than previously. El, prophesied future dark lady of the apocalypse with a savant’s talent for specifically the sort of magic you cast after cackling and before someone puts a sword in you, doesn’t get to enjoy that much – her senior year seems destined to be spent being the target of just about every monster that’s left. Eventually you really have to wonder if the school is trying to kill you – and that question is where the plot really starts to go off.

So I said it before, but this is very much YA. I don’t mean that as an insult, or even a marker of quality, just that it’s a book from the perspective of a 17 year old looking down the end of high school and clearly written to provide a relatable emotional reality for an assumed audience of the same. So El sometimes acts like a cartoon character, and is pathologically incapable of expressing her emotions coherently or expressing affection for the guy she likes in any sane manner, and is far more blase about murder attempts and soul-eating monsters than emotionally awkward conversations – but honestly all that just rings as pretty true to life. Deeply aggravating at times, and her internal monologue and all its snark and doublethink does occasionally grate a bit, but overall it really works. She’s just a fun character to spend time in the head of, (and far less irritating in basically every way than she was in the last book. So hey, maturity!).

The emotional beats were all pretty simple and clearly telegraphed, and it isn’t exactly a book that requires you to sit down and ponder deep symbolism or metaphor to comprehend, but the pacing is tight and it’s very readable. The prose isn’t really anything to write home about – especially knowing what Novik can do when she decides to get fancy and show off a bit – but it very clear and just dripping with El’s personality on every page. I read this at the same time as I was picking through an incredibly dense and citation-heavy historical reader, and the contrast made me very appreciative of those virtues.

Character-wise – well, there’s El, and Orion (love interest, single-minded and near divinely-ordained monster hunter, golden boy of the most powerful enclave in the world), and there’s El’s few close friends, and then there’s a cast of dozens of students with maybe one memorable character trait who kind of drift in and out of the narrative as required. The amount of nuance and exploration someone gets drops off dramatically with each step down the list you go. Most of the cast shows up precisely when required and is more or less forgotten about directly afterwards – which does sell this being a school with over a thousand students in it! But the number of characters who really feel real drops off pretty rapidly.

(Also like, I assume it just comes down to social progress in the 2010s coming at you fast, but you really get the sense that at some point between the books getting written the publishers sent down a memo that you were allowed to say queer people existed now.)

Even more than Deadly Education, this is a book without any sort of singular villain, or even really any consistent antagonists. Some of the other students are assholes, sure, but the book’s whole thesis is that no one is that murderous or awful for the sake of it – they are because they’re rats in a cage, convinced that amoral self-interest and husbanding and acquiring every resource they can is the only hope they have of maybe living to see their families again. Offered a chance to do good, to actually change things for the better and help everyone without getting themselves killed in the process, just about everyone takes it. Even the semi-intelligent school itself gets in on it by the end, pressing the senior class to figure something out and make it obsolete – and the whole conflict of the final act is how and whether everyone will.

El and Orion can both kill basically arbitrarily large numbers of monsters (or people), so the monster-killing is never really where the book finds its drama either. I mean, both do a lot of it through the climax, but the actual tension mostly comes down to crowd management and logistics and whether everyone else is as committed to this as the two of them are.

As for what they’re struggling against – so like, this isn’t Divergent, by the standards of the YA I read in high school, the social commentary is both subtle and nuanced. But I mean, it’s also a story where highschool is four years or murder-hell-prison and justified only because it’s barely the lesser of two evils, and also a story where the poor and marginalized are only kept around more-or-less explicitly as ablative bodies for the kids the powers that be care about, with their only hope of good life being so impressive and useful to those kids that they try to bring them along when they ascend back up to the gilded paradise that is their birthright. So like, not that subtle.

As far as teenage romances go (which, for me, really isn’t very fair at all), El and Orion’s was surprisingly tolerable. It helps that they’re both actually deeply profoundly weird about it, and also that the book didn’t try to milk any drama out of will-they/won’t-they stuff or a love triangle. The ‘and they have sex for the first time the night before the final climactic struggle where one or both of them could very well die’ did feel right out of an old bioware game, though. (Also I’m just a sucker for tragedy and ironic mirroring/repetition, so the ending was great for me).

Look forward to finishing the series whenever I get around to it sometime in the fall.

[mikuni14]

Last Twilight - Ep 12

I really gave this series a chance, I honestly sat down for this episode thinking, ok, maybe they will save this dumpster fire that was the finale of the previous ep. I really WANTED to like it.

The series went for my throat literally in the first minute 😀 After that everything was more or less torture. Almost every scene, every word felt like it was written specifically against me 😆

Let's start with a nice scene of a smiling Day saying coachy, positive bullshit suggesting that he pulled himself up by his bootstraps, and wasn't literally dragged out of the stagnation and depression by Mhok. A montage of scenes of Day thriving. All of this thanks to himself!

And then Mhok arrives, cue the romantic Halmark escalator scene and………… ……………………. ……………….. Mhok and Day slip into their old shoes, acting exactly like they did after their first kiss scene LMAOOOO they literally went back in time to this episode, Mhok flirts, Day is skittish. Everything that happened is pointless. They act like the 3 YEARS (!!!!) apart, or that horrible scene, or even the fact that Day fucking blocked Mhok didn't exist.

This whole episode killed me because it made it seem like Day was the victim of something really bad and Mhok was the bad guy, like it was all because of him, like he had done something terrible to Day. When Day asks his mother if he can give Mhok a chance because he might do "the same thing again", it sounds like Mhok was beating him or cheating on him????? Mhok thanking for the breakup????????? Mhok doing emotional labor again and winning over Day, while Day pushes him away (but not really) and is blushing and skittish and just takes the attention given to him was a literal repeat of the past and actively made me feel upset, for me it was humiliating to see Mhok like that.

And what's interesting - Mhok after his return is exactly the same, he behaves exactly the same, he is "overprotective" again. But now, Day and the plot are ok with it? 🤔

And this wedding, which somehow was about Day anyway. Like everything. (Night and Porjai in the future: remember our wedding? oh yes, that event when we took DAY to the airport and when DAY had his eye surgery? 😆)

Also, please leave the weddings, the profound speeches, the dramatic scenes, the tearjerkers, the airport runs, and the sudden phone calls about available transplants to the professionals. Soap operas do it so much better, so just… leave it. I can cry my eyes out at these scenes during Bollywood movies because they know how to do it. In Last Twilight I don't know where to hide because of embarrassment.

Day getting his sight back? I'm for it! It wasn't a miracle, just a medical procedure. Why would they deny him that? Especially since medicine could help in his case. But again, it's not about what happened, it's about HOW it happened, it's about the execution (which is also my main complaint about the scene from the previous episode). It was just melodramatic and crammed into the moment to force an emotional response from the audience. And did you notice how flat the scene when Day sees fell? "I can see!" haha, Porjai is pretty, end of the scene. Like???? The series told a certain story and from a narrative point of view, Day's regaining his sight at that moment and in such a way was artificial, so it does not give any satisfaction or joy in the fact that a blind person can see again - I was embarrassed by how cringe and saccharine this scene is. Not to mention the beginning of the episode contradicted the ending of the episode! The story must hold together, it must be coherent, the series should have a central, main idea. Last Twilight doesn't have that, it lost it 2 episodes ago, and the saccharine ending of this show was just a soap opera nail in the coffin.

tl;dr Mhok and Day are back in the past. Despite the loud speeches about development, growing and having a beautiful life despite adversities, the series made sure that the characters end it pretty much the same, in perfect circumstances, without the slightest cloud in their perfect sky 😀

The best things about this series are:

Mhok, my golden boy

Night without hesitation or making a big deal out of it, calling Porjai's baby his. I am a sucker for men who don't care whether their child is his blood. Night and Ha Do Young from The Glory, unconditionally loving their children regardless of whether they are their biological parents -> 💯💯💯

Right now, I'm not even angry, I don't even have any particular negative feelings. I just… I watched the whole episode like that:

[lakesbian]

what... what happened to monster pulse...

>looking online for webcomics to read >find this one called monster pulse that has apparently already been completed and looks like it has an interesting premise >start reading >over the course of years of updates the art becomes better and better and the narrative improves significantly, the character dynamics are meaningful and nuanced and interesting, all of the plot threads come together really well over time and i have absolutely no memorable complaints with the writing >there's a funny april fool's update where the comic is briefly written as if it were a worse/more generic action strip with cheaper writing >the character i was kind of wishfully envisioning getting baby butch vibes from at the start of the story even begins actually dressing in boys clothes and her new design is really cute and endearing >suspicious at first because i've been burned before but her relationship to gender is well written >i have high hopes of lesbianism at first because she turns down a boy in a weirdgirl way but they even manage to sell me on her liking a boy because of a well-written conversation w/ her crush where she talks about liking being bald because she's just, like, completely outside of beauty and it's not something she has to worry about living up to she can just Be Herself >plot starts wrapping up and i'm like great all they have to do is stick a solid 7/10 on the landing and it's a highly recommendable webcomic >plot reaches fantastic natural endpoint 10/10 > > >IT KEEPS GOING >utterly merciless character assassinations one after another ive dedicated hours to this ive gotten so cheerful and hopeful about it and now i crumble into devastation as i announce each subsequent assassination i'm talking character arcs that spent the entire long ass webcomic being built up being entirely subverted out of fucking nowhere. it's like liveblogging an 80-car pileup. gnc girl has suddenly magically decided that actually she just needed to recognize that she could be beautiful even while bald and has put on a cartoonishly pink skirt and bunny hoodie. protagonist who has an incredibly complicated relationship to her heart monster goes from genuinely debating letting her die to "i wouldnt give her up for ANYTHING <333" power of friendship for no apparent reason. etc. etc. to quote myself in the moment "to be clear about the scope of fuckupery here they Character Assassinated the masc girl and it's actually only the third or fourth worst mistake." <- briefly after this message i bumped it down to Fifth worst mistake. character with her brain as her monster has an entire arc where the point is another character learning they can't "save" her from her monster because she is her brain/they need to think more carefully about what they perceive as the "real" her ends up concluding her arc by out of fucking nowhere saying "ive let my real self lie dormant" Et Cetera. >genuinely entirely reminiscent of the prior bad-on-purpose april fools strip but like unironically with no self awareness >never even adequately summarized what was wrong w it in a coherent write up because i was too mad to think about it for more than 3.4 seconds at a time >i hope the fences we mended. fall down beneath their own weight. and i h

[soildmud]

reading inky mystery

good morning y’all, it is currently 3AM right now and i have developed some very strong opinions about inky mystery that i need to projectile vomit onto the internet. this is gonna be like a book review so i have some disclaimers/warnings:

#1: this “review” is not intended for the author, TAP, or anyone directly involved with the writing of IM. this is readers-only!

#3: i will most likely say very few positive things about the fic so if you don’t want to see negative remarks about your fav fic/story, maybe don’t read this. and also if you can’t handle strong language.

#4: i have not read all of IM, and there is a reason why. i will explain later on but i don’t need anyone to try and avoid spoilers. i don’t care for this fic enough to worry about that. talk to your heart’s content, i want to hear what y’all have to say!!!!

#5: i still enjoy inky mystery and its concepts and the overall story ideas. i think it’s fun and a cool spin on the original qftim au (an au that had so much potential and such shitty execution) and love how the fic has created an entire community around it! don’t get this twisted, i got nothing against IM or TAP.

now i’m gonna put the “review” (more like a rant) under a cut so as to not take up space on people’s dashes more than i already have lol—have fun!!

with such an interesting and promising premise, inky mystery has so far been a frustrating disappointment. i started reading it a while ago (had to stop because of school) and picked up again last night, hoping to get further into the fic and reach the parts that seem to be much more compelling than the exposition. i’m only on chapter 20 and already want to just stop reading it altogether. the more i progress through this the more i think to myself, “is this fic even worth reading 2.5 million words and 335 chapters?” as i’ve come to the beginning of chapter 21, i’m starting to think it most definitely is not.

obviously the biggest criticism is the length. there is absolutely no reason for why this fic is like 3 times longer than the fucking BIBLE. twelve “books” for what? to leave us in the same spot of the plot for the fifth time in a row when the conflict could have been resolved in almost half a chapter? the over-explanation of everything and the placement of practically useless dialogue is excruciating. i don’t understand how having chapter long bits of the warner shenanigans was necessary; i get it was meant for comedy but i don’t think they should dragged any longer than like a paragraph. their dialogue gets old incredibly fast, and it’s just a hinder to the fic’s flow. and before anyone says anything—I HAVE WATCHED ANIMANIACS BEFORE. in fact, i used to be obsessed with them and watched every episode until it stopped airing in 2014. i know they’re supposed to be the way they are in the fic but Holy SHIT DUDE. SHUT THEM THE FUCK UP ALREADY.

listen. i know this was originally written in 2017, but if you’re still updating this into 2024, at this point you need to remake the whole fic and shorten it. the way the author is updating the fic with basically filler makes me feel like they care more about creating content for their readers rather than actually writing a coherent narrative. you don’t need to take down the OG fic but there has got to be a way to shorten it so it doesn’t take literally a week straight to finish the fic in one sitting.

anyways. apart from that, i need to say that the writing style is so juvenile in a way that feels aggravating. i read the most recent chapter to see if anything changed and while it certainly improved in small ways, i feel like TAP still hasn’t learned how to not make sentences like four words long and dialogue sequences that don’t make up half the chapter. i also feel like the narrative is just…holding the readers hand and explaining every little thing like they expect the reader not to have any media literacy at all. i don’t need to know explicitly that boris and bendy are tired from walking for hours, i knew that from your narration mentioning their legs aching and them getting mucky from clambering in the forest.

next, i hate the random inclusion of unnecessary characters. the way the two detectives seem to only show up when it’s convenient and how the warners were used basically like a deus ex machina is frustrating. don’t introduce so many characters with so much detail and then have them show up like twice. i don’t know how to explain this because it’s almost 4AM now and my brain is foggy but god. when those two fox characters were randomly introduced at the end of idk what chapter to have a completely useless conversation with the detectives i felt so annoyed. i don’t know if they have any real significance later on in the story (and i don’t mean that they show up to say hi later) and honestly i cannot be bothered to find out if they do, but if they don’t, that entire section of the chapter was fucking stupid. let your MAIN CHARACTERS learn information from other sources for the love of god.

in the end, i don’t know if i’ll ever finish Inky Mystery, at least not anytime soon. i had fun at the start and now i’m just annoyed and frustrated. also, to the wiki people, PLEASE MAKE CHAPTER SUMMARIES AND SHIT—IT WOULD BE A DREAM FOR THOSE OF US WHO DON’T WANT TO SIT THROUGH 2.5 MILLION WORDS FOR PLOT AND STORY!!!!

also, i am not claiming to be a better writer or have superior knowledge to TAP. i think TAP is good at writing, but has some flaws that really limit their full potential. i myself am an amateur writer with no training or anything, but i am a reader, so that’s why i’m yapping.

ALSO ALSO, i am not doing this to shit on TAP or IM or anyone who likes this story and everything. like i said, i actually like IM and really want to get into it so i can make fanart and everything, but it has been a struggle and i want to voice that because this is my blog and i use it like a virtual diary. i will continue to skim and push through IM, and will most definitely use it as a learning tool for my own au, SITP.

again, this review was made with zero malice in mind. however if anyone wants to say anything i’m 100% open to conversation, and if this reaches TAP’s screen somehow, please know i’m not trying to be a hater!!! i love your ideas and the community you’ve created, promise!!!! i’m done now cus i’m tired and need to sleep so bye to anybody who read through this beast of a post lol plus i don’t have the energy to write all i wanted to say. sorry if there’s any mistakes i’m falling asleep as i write LMAO

bye!!!!!!

[wirelychee]

How I draft long plots

(I was once asked about this topic, and I thought I'd write an actual post about it. I don't know if the person who asked is around anymore, but I decided to post this just in case it might be useful for someone else. 🧡) ***

So, this is just a tiny little understatement, but I have a tendency to write REALLY long stories, and over time I’ve just kind of gravitated towards organizing my writing in a very specific way, and I thought I'd illustrate that process a little bit here (with pictures!).

I really hope that there's at least something useful here for someone! I do want to emphasize that everyone’s writing style/process is unique, and there are no right or wrong answers. In the end, it's best just to try various different things and then pick & mix whichever of them work for you! 😊💛

(I have no idea if anyone ends up reading any of this, but if you do I’d love to hear your thoughts and I’d be happy to answer any questions as well! 🌻)

Note: I originally posted this on my personal blog here, feel free to read or comment wherever you prefer! 🤗

1. Lightweight program for writing

I know a lot of people use google docs to write fanfics, but I personally never use it for any fictional writing (only when necessary for work or other official files). I really just do not vibe with gdocs on any physical, spiritual or virtual level... 😅

Instead I’ve written all of my fics using a very old program called Rough Draft*. The best part about using this type of simple & lightweight software is that I can always have many MANY long text files open in multiple tabs within the program without having any issues with lagging or loading at all. This makes all the different chapters easily accessible and it’s super quick to switch between them (seriously ZERO loading times).

This feature is absolutely necessary for me, since I write SUPER long chapters, and if I’m writing chapter 4 for example, I will always have at least chapters 3 & 5 open at the same time (+ usually many more chapters, or other fics I'm working on). The previous chapter is open so that I can look up specific parts that I might need to reference from it, and to check any details that I might’ve forgotten. The next chapters are usually open, because I often edit/cut parts from the current chapter and move them into future chapters that are still in progress.

Another feature that I use all the time is the "Notepad" tab, which automatically saves as a separate text file. It makes editing feel a lot less stressful, when I can just freely dump every single bit of deleted writing in the little notepad box, knowing that I could still easily dig them up later if I need to.

In this screenshot, you can see the "Pad" tab (a separate file of its own), where I've cut & pasted all the sentences I deleted from that chapter (ahah there's A LOT...).

(*unfortunately Rough Draft is very old & buggy at this point, so I do recommend finding a newer similar program to use instead. Also, I still have to use html-coding with it as well…)

2. Chapter index

I usually spend A LOT of time making sure the main plot is as easy to follow as possible (without sacrificing any suspension or complexity), because I personally feel like having a clear narrative flow improves reading immersion significantly.

Many of my stories have at least 10+ chapters and to keep track of them all (especially in a way that helps to organize the story into a coherent narrative) I usually make a separate chapter index file for each story I'm writing. That file basically serves as both a plot/chapter overview, and a central place to gather all the various potentially relevant info for the story.

Since I write Multi POV stories, 90% of the time I divide the chapters into different character sections, which honestly helps me to better understand the story as a whole as well. Under the titles or character names I write down basically anything that could be useful for that particular part (snippets of dialogue, research notes, new ideas, possible story changes, references/relations to other characters or events etc).

I decided to use an AtLA fic as an example here, since the notes for that fic look a lot more organized and less spoilery than for most of the other fics. The first pic below is a screenshot of the chapter index file for The Spirit Stone, showing a few chapters that I’ve already posted on ao3.

.....And if all of this looks like I'm making an unnecessary amount of lists, that's because that's exactly what I'm doing lol. 😂 I just genuinely like making neat lists of things! 🧡 I always make sure to also colour-code the different character POVs to make them appear more distinct from each other – and more importantly so that the list is nicer for me to look at heheh :3 (which is obviously very crucial).

(*Sokka got assigned a lovely lilac, bc Katara already had blue and Sokka didn’t have any other canon colour associations 😅)

Sometimes if I feel like the scene could be more interesting/relevant from a different perspective than I had originally planned, or if it seems like one character POV is becoming too dominant or repeats too many times, I go through these lists and try to figure out in which way I could change or move around the POVs without interrupting the pacing/narrative flow of the main story.

Here’s also an overview of another fic I’m writing (first half of Residually), in which I use the exact same style again for breaking down the different POVs. Like in above pic, I didn’t include any actual chapter notes here either, since they were super spoilery. (The plot & flashbacks in this fic are crazy intertwined, which I suppose is fitting for a story about an omniscient network of fungi lol :3)

3. Chapter notes

Above screenshots are overviews of multiple chapters, however, like I mentioned I removed the random chapter notes to make the example pictures look cleaner & less spoilery. While the writing is still in process, those individual chapter & POV headings are actually FULL of various notes & scribblings. And usually they look pretty messy too, since I just throw any potentially useful thoughts/ideas/research tidbits into those notes.

Things that I generally add to the chapter notes:

- first a list of potential POVs to figure out which characters should be prominent/are central to this chapter - under the POV headings, the main gist of what a character does or should do at this point in the story - some key conversation snippets/dialogue - important plots points that I need to keep in mind - research info that I want to include in the chapter/is relevant later - connections/references to some other part of the story - reminders of which POVs/sections are still unclear or need more work/edits - possible changes to the chapter/overall plot (if they're crucial changes they'll be accompanied by !!!!! and a red highlighter lol)

Below is a screenshot of (Spirit Stone) chapter 5 notes while it was still a work in progress (from early stages, I added more notes later).

Also here’s a screenshot of chapter notes for one of the newer fics that I’ve been writing (for Taxi Driver/모범택시, not sure if I’ll ever post it publicly though). I’ve obscured most of the actual text, but this is just to demonstrate that I use this same method all the time, and I write down A LOT of notes in this way, especially in the early stages when planning out a new story.

4. Major story arcs

I don’t use this kind of index very often, but occasionally I also do lists with notes like this about major story arcs spread over multiple chapters (the below pic is also of Spirit Stone). Sometimes this kind of list can be helpful to write down, or at least think about, if you're worried about dealing with many complex topics that might make you lose sight of the bigger overarching story. It’s enough to write just a few simple sentences about the main plot points/themes that you want to deal with in those specific chapters (but ofc they don’t need to be set in stone, the story can still change drastically even when half-way finished).

I don't usually use this during the first stage of drafting plots, to me this kind of list is mostly there as clarification or reminder about the overall structure/themes/goals of the story.

5. Writing the chapters  (caution: worst method ever, not recommended 🚫)

So, usually the way I write the actual POV parts of the chapters is basically just writing an overlong rambly block of text (just a SHIT TON of text), with conversations & scenes often in non-linear order, and then painstakingly editing & arranging all of that into something more coherent and smoother to read (this is why it takes me absolutely fucken' forever to edit my stories, WAY longer than the writing itself ahah...). Tbh this process kind of feels like dragging in a big-ass log of wood, and then (like a dumbass) trying to whittle an elaborate sculpture out of it with a flimsy little pocket knife lol. :'))

Is this method a smart way to write? Nope, absolutely not. Is it incredibly ridiculously time-consuming? Oh yes, absolutely. Does it for some frustrating reason work for me? Yeah, unfortunately it does... Do I recommend it? Nope, never, please save yourself and be smarter than me. 🙃 ▫▫▫

Regardless of fandom or whether I’m writing original stories, my basic approach is the same. But like I mentioned before, organizing the chapters in this way was mostly born out of the fact that I usually write Multi POV stories with various alternating characters. Although, I’m sure you could definitely do this kind of categorizing with a single POV character too, if that’s more your kind of thing! :)

Just to reiterate, there are no right or wrong answers or methods. It's always good to try out different things and then eventually you'll find a process that works for you specifically! 😊🧡

[sleepymarmot]

Bright Young Things (2003) / Vile Bodies (1930)

Yes, yes, of course I watched this for young gay Michael Sheen.

For real, the main entertainment factor of this film is embodying the Leo pointing meme every time a familiar face shows up on screen. At some point a certain someone appeared in an incidental role for a few seconds in a close-up next to Tennant and I completely fucking lost it. The UK can’t possibly have so few actors!

I’ve never even heard of the book this was based on, or was aware this was an adaptation before being informed in the opening titles, but it’s very noticeable. The script frantically jumps from plot point to plot point just like in any other feature film that tries to cram a novel in less than two hours of runtime. A bigger problem is that it’s not very clear to the viewer whether they should even try to make out a plot out of this string of scenes, or it’s a narrative that operates on vibes only. (I had to quickly leaf through previous scenes because I’d put a name to a wrong face, all while wondering if correcting myself was even worth it.) The film has a boisterous beginning, then slows down for a long time, then is given a shot of energy when James McAvoy’s character does a certain big thing halfway through (I cheered. Then I went “Oh man :/”). The plot does get a bit more coherent after that.

The ending caught me by surprise: I didn’t realize it was that late in the thirties. The radio announcement was a real “Guess he’ll die” moment, and it was immediately followed by a scene where the main character and his love interest seemed to poetically die on the same day… And then both of these were swiftly undone. The final scene was so conspicuously set during an air raid in a room filled with burning candles that I kept expecting the final frame to be a bomb hitting the building, or someone knocking over one of the candles — either way, with the pair being set ablaze just like the rediscovered manuscript. But no, it was just… a happy/bittersweet melodramatic ending? Instead of a neat destructive one? But I had already given up on the emotionally involved melodramatic mode of viewing because I’d written off the characters as unlikeable empty shells whom you study like a bug instead of rooting for! The girl didn’t even seem to like the boy and the boy sold her, what kind of emotion was their reunion supposed to evoke? And what happened to Agatha and Miles during/after the war? According to the summary on Wikipedia, the original novel’s ending is entirely different in content and tone, and much more in tune with the detached cynicism of the story up to the war, which makes me wonder even more about the adaptation’s intent.

It was nice to look at all these pretty people in fashionable clothes, and get a glimpse of a foreign historical setting. “Watching a random mildly obscure production because you’ve heard about it online and/or some star was in it” is a familiar, semi-forgotten experience, and that felt pleasantly nostalgic.

---

Of course, I couldn’t resist immediately reading the original book to compare, encouraged by a review saying that it’s actually not that long. I found a public domain version somewhere and read the bare original text without commentary, even though I’m sure it’s a terrible way to consume century-old satire.

I was surprised to discover that the book is from 1930 — and still ends with a great war (fictional, I assume). No wonder the adaptation moved the setting a decade forward!

My impression that the characters and their stories were supposed evoke curiosity and contempt rather than compassion was confirmed. I now find the shoehorned sappy ending even stranger. The film version turned out to be very faithful otherwise: the unimportant events and characters are condensed well, and the weird pacing and disjointedness that I perceived as a trait of sloppy adaptation were actually true to the source material.

The last chapters of the book feel different not because of the sudden bleakness, but because the scope is rapidly narrowed to the few main characters, and most of the secondary subplots are dropped. The book, unlike the adaptation, puts a definite end to Agatha’s story (and her life), and there’s an entire subplot about a fictional film that didn’t make it to the real film, but what about the Prime Minister and his unsuccessful courtship of a Japanese noblewoman, or Miles’ brother and his rejected proposal? I thought these were going somewhere.

What a shame that the misunderstanding about “shooting” didn’t make it to the adaptation — it’s one of the few passages in the novel I found genuinely funny. Speaking of dialogue, I thought the “parties” monologue in the film was very unnatural and theatrical, and sure, in the novel it’s not said aloud but belongs to the narrator.

The minor character who hosted the fateful party was in the novel actually, uhh, a major character from the writer’s previous novel who made money via human trafficking?? That would have been very confusing for the movie’s audience, so I think it was pretty clever to throw all that out and make her Miles’ mother instead. Too bad a more serious take on Miles warranted a new surname: “Miles Malpractice” is a great name.

Miles’ role was expanded a lot for the film, which I think we all agree was a good choice. Most of his lines in the movie, including the tearful goodbye, aren’t in the book at all! So that’s another thing that was made more dramatic for the film. You win some (Miles), you lose some (the ending). The moral of the story is… Stephen Fry is better at writing a gay character than a straight romance? No wonder; the question is why he even bothered with the latter.

[thechaoscryptid]

👀👀 hello! Here to ask about Wake the White Wolf for the WIP name game 👀👀 is this about Kakashi?? Or Sakumo??? TELL ME MORE PLEASE 🥹

(curious about my WIPs?)

Also tagging in @mrssakurahatake, who also asked about WWW 🥹🥰

It is indeed about Kakashi! And, by subplot extension, Sakumo lmao. So Wake the White Wolf was a project I embarked on in late 2018 into early 2019, back in my KakaIru days. It's the longest fic I've ever written, even though it's nowhere near finished - I did 120k in a little over 8 months, and I've never come close to anything like that before.

It was, however, an idea that was too advanced for my skill level at the time, I think. I had a lot of ideas (good ones!) but not the skill to do them justice, which is part of why it's sat in WIP purgatory for the last several years 😭 I've been so busy actually leveling up as a writer and exploring different fandoms that the work it's going to take to breathe new life into the fic was just too much.

Now, however, my Wake the White Wolf document is a beautiful blank page, and also going to be part of my novel-plotting process! I've got a few different plotting methods I'd like to try before I sit down and try to actually puzzle out my novel's plot, and because I know how WWW was supposed to go, I want to do a test run with that story (and then, of course, rewrite it).

There are things I plan to do a little differently this time around, aspects I'd like to flesh out and nail down, but it's been ages since I've really sat down with a Naruto fic and I'm just. Kinda. Giving myself space to feel all right in the fandom again as I work the story out.

Story-wise:

I'm JAZZED AS HELL to really develop the secondary relationships in the fic more. There's a lot of healing to do between Kakashi and Iruka before they really can start to be together (forced marriage trope heehee), and I want both of them to be a little more mature before the turning points really start to hit. I'm especially excited about the IruAnko besties-with-benefits and GenRai "oh, so these relationships CAN work" vision

There's also a great B-plot about Kakashi that has to do with the fic's OC, Sera, and Orochimaru, which was like really vaguely alluded to in what's posted but I'm feral about actually working into the fic.

I wrote this at a time I was really just starting to question my gender and long before I came out as trans, and I think writing the fic (which, looking back, is an exploration of that gender angst) through the lens of a better-adjusted person is going to be a great experience and make for a more coherent, cohesive narrative.

I guess like LONG long story short this is a fic that's haunted me for ages because I really appreciate every single person who's read it but there's also that "fuck, I'm so much better than this" that I just have to GET OVER and rewrite the thing so people can see!!!